Saturday, 28 November 2015

I'm not sure how much of a surprise it was for Cupric Router, but it was certainly a surprise to me -- Coop has a LOT of friends and a bunch of them worked together to arrange a surprise party to celebrate his 5th Rezday.
The theme of the party was -- everyone came with red hair to celebrate Coop's ginger-ness. Not a problem for me, I just showed up with my regular hair, but a lot of people went to a lot of trouble to go ginger for the

day to honour Coop.
It was so crowded, I couldn't manage more than a couple of pictures at Ginger Holler, the party site, before I crashed; that's just a testament to his popularity. Happy Rezday, Coop, and we all wish you many, many more!

Saturday, 7 November 2015

I took these pictures a while back; actually this is a location that I've used before. It's a kinetic sculpture of shifting planes of colour on the public grounds of 3Bears sim; my husband and I live not too far away.
I think what fascinates me about this sculpture is that it offers a chance to do a kind of photography that I think is the most interesting, and perhaps the most difficult, in Second Life. The keyword

for this is serendipity -- I use what I find at the moment. Essentially I stood in the middle of the sculpture and snapped photographs, and looked them over later. None have been altered. I don't use Photoshop, and in this case I didn't change the Windlight settings. I didn't even change the daylight settings! I let my av move according to my AO, and every once in a while, *snap*, just like photographers used to do, and then find out what you've got when you develop the pictures. Well, okay, I didn't develop

these! Too old-fashioned. But the surprise you sometimes get when you look at the picture after the shoot is wonderful; a great feeling.
The picture at the top is the most serendipitous one of all. The little grin is the reflex that Second Life produces when someone takes a photograph -- a kind of "cheese!" reaction. All I had to do to get that was take a shot and then quickly refresh and take another. That brings in the other most interesting and difficult thing to get into SL photographs:

emotion. We all look wonderfully handsome or beautiful, but finding a way to get emotion into a picture is really difficult. Most often I try to show emotion in the way I place things and people in the picture, but a serendipitous little grin -- hell, yeah, I'll use that.
I know that my friends have a lot -- a LOT -- to teach me about SL photography, technically and every other way. But don't you find that the best photographs have serendipity and emotion?

Alex Thaub was a little sad last night that he had to put his Corvette away for the winter. So I tried to make him feel better with a hug and a kiss ... then we went for one last ride. I think the car will be in the garage until spring, but we had one last bit of fun.

Thursday, 5 November 2015

Alex Thaub and I had the pleasure of attending a small party for Bryan Trefoil's 8th Rezday last night. It was hosted at the estate of Dillon Mays and Bobby Mays ... and put together by Bryan's good friend Novs Morlim, as near as I could tell, who also had a hand in putting together an interesting gift for Bryan. Bryan's always had an interest in bodybuilders and everyone was asked to attend in a posing suit and

shaved -- just like a competition. We were also requested to, one by one, give Bryan a lap dance using the animations in the pink chair that Novs provided.
I didn't manage to get any pictures of the lap dances -- I was too busy motorboating the rezday boy LOL -- so that will just have to be the subject of your prurient imaginations. Indeed, my photographic skills were more useless than usual, even by my low standards ... I didn't manage to get a good close-up of Bryan himself or hardly anyone else, it

seems. Nor did I manage a photo of Bobby's' gift, a huge muscle monster with an enormous -- towel holder. But I approached Bryan about doing an interview with me to perhaps get an idea of some of the wisdom that's accumulated in those eight years, and I'll bring that to you at a near point. There were a lot of interesting folks at the party that may well form the subject of future interviews. I can just name-check the other guests that were there when Alex and I arrived: my friends Joseph

Nussbaum and Marly Moon, Gargieux, and Jarvis Randtalirantaralundar. Beautifully decorated, a lovely surrounding, nice people, well-chosen music, lots of muscle on display, and a good time was had by all!

Sunday, 1 November 2015

Alex Thaub and I got dressed up for Hallowe'en last night ... one problem is, we didn't quite know what we were dressed as. Finally I thought the phrase "gay elven warrior strippers" would cover it. I plugged that into the search engine, looking for a place to take some pictures -- and came up with some kind of elven grotto. Cool!
Then we went off to Second Pride's Volcano venue to dance to the music

and hosting team of Lex Solari-Holland and Christian Holland Solari. Good music, good friends, lots of great costumes, and a good time was had by all.
Happy Hallowe'en!